Publisher's Summary

My Spin on Cricket tells the story of the great game through the eyes of one of its most popular commentators. Richie Benaud, former Australian cricket captain of distinction, has been a successful and highly respected writer on the sport for many years and is now globally admired for his work with both Australian and British television. Affectionately known as "The Voice of Cricket", he is uniquely qualified to pass comment on the state of the game, past and present, which he does in his own inimitable style.

Story

Great Man, Great Story, Poor Narration

The story of Richie up until 2005 is a great one but this book needs to be re-narrated. To have a person who is not Australian was a terrible decision for one reason; the narrator could not pronounce Australian place names correctly. It is also obvious that the narrator is not a true fan of cricket because there were a few cricketers names mis-pronounced.It absolutely ruined the experience for me.

Richie Benaud: My Spin on Cricket

I found this a very disappointing audio book. I was expecting insights into Richies life and times with cricketers over some of the most exciting decades of test cricket and got a badly put together hodge podge of alot of statistics and apparently randomly chosen events.There was no apparent structure or logic unless. Also his voice is so distinctive it is a pity he did not narrate this himself. I soldiered on for an hour or so on Part 1 and gave up. Didn't even listen to Part Two. A real shame as Richie is an insightful and talented commentator and fine cricketer but this didn't translate into this book in my opinion

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Alex

10-08-09

Ruined by ill-conceived narration

Richie Benaud is a great, great man and is known for two key attributes in the world of cricket. The first is that he has a wonderfully rich voice that conveys the nuances of the better than any one else and the second is that he is an Australian. So why on earth is this book voiced by someone else? and not just any old someone else but an English someone else.

Really disappointed. The book is still a really detailed and well thought out philosophies on the game but it looses so much because it is not done in Richie's tones. It sounds ridiculous to hear an Englishman recount his pride at captaining Australia. I have no issue at all with other books being narrated by people other than the author, except when the author is known for 'narrating' the story of just about every test match I ever watched up until his retirement.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Overall

Andrew

06-07-09

And another fascinating thing happened...

Unfortunately I had never realised how uninteresting previous exposures to this great man have been. He is still a legend but it was very difficult to get through to the end.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

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Performance

Story

T. Dickson

03-21-17

A good insight to a Cricket Great.

the book was well written and gave me some fine insights to the Aussie cricketing mindset.

it was spoiled by a reader who didn't understand the text and it sounded as if he hadn't rehearsed or even read the book. For example, he stopped speaking between phrases like sight and screen, making it sound like "he asked to move the sight. Screen over."

Overall

Ian

06-08-11

Confusion stopped play

Once I got into this, the book started to grow on me, though I too regretted the lack of an Australian narrator. Benaud tends to ramble a bit and to re-visit topics and characters, so perhaps a firmer editorial hand would have been useful. In the end I wasn’t certain exactly what the aim of the book had been. It’s not chronological in any respect. Nor is it noticeably thematic. More a collected set of musings with cricket being its common theme.

Overall

Roy

02-13-11

why not get an Aussie to read the book.

I tried to like this audiobook but it just didn't work in an English accent.

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Performance

Story

Amazon Customer

10-27-17

Richie

Great listening. A little self indulgance at times but it's Richie so you can get away with it.